


I bring you disorder

by AetosForeas



Series: A Disorder of the Ancients [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 09:44:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20113087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AetosForeas/pseuds/AetosForeas
Summary: 330 BCE. Ecbatana, in Persia. The King of Kings, Darius III, has fled twice from Eskandar, Alexander of Macedon. Now. a lone woman had managed what Alexander's assassins have not, and has reached the King in his last hiding place. But she says she doesn't want him dead -- rather, she wants him to deliver a message to his masters, the Order of the Ancients.





	1. Chapter 1

The nights were hot at Ecbatana, and the air was full of fear. It did not feel as if it were winter to her.  


The horned one is coming, the whispers said. The devil from the west, the Prince of Evil, the overthrower, Eskandar. The remnants of the Persian army that camped there were aflame with whispers, stories of the beast who had come east to sack Persepolis and drive the King of Kings from his throne. It was said that Eskandar boasted he would have Darius in chains before the 113th Olympiad, and many now believed it was possible.  


On the rooftops, she could hear a drunken charioteer grunting harshly between belches.  


“Fled at Issus and again at Gaugamela and now we’re here, stuck like pigs in a pen.”  


“Be silent. Bagyes.” His hissed voice carried quite clearly up to her, the panic making him shrill. “If one of the commanders…”  


“You think they’re not saying it? The Man from Macedon practically rules the Empire now. Western feet trample the roads. Ionia, Egypt, the Levant, now Parse itself has burned at his order. What will we do when he finally comes after Artashata? Stand and fight? No. He’s going to run. Again. He’ll run until he runs out of land.” Another belch. “Or until Bessus decides he’s run far enough.”  


She left, catlike from roof to roof, clambering up walls carver with four-winged men. She’d seen their like before – in Sardis, Persepolis, and other Persian cities. They were meant as guardians, protectors, servants of Ahura Mazdha – this being the Persian name for Zeus, as she understood it. Herodotus had tried to explain the Persian religion to her once, and she had not been particularly interested then. She barely even liked thinking about the gods she’d been born under, especially after…  


Well. Enough of that. She had work to do.  


The King had, of course, chosen the greatest building in Ecbatana as his dwelling, and his hand-picked bodyguard of Immortals stood as sentries and protectors. They lacked the four wings, and were almost easier to bypass. It was certainly not the palace the King of Kings would have been accustomed to, but that was gone, burned by Alexander’s forces in a drunken orgy. She shook her head at the folly of it. The building hadn’t done anything.  


She found the man she sought in a bedchamber on the second level of the former Satrap’s home.  


“Basileus Basileōn, please.” The man’s voice was heavily accented Greek, with a Doric tinge. “Just getting this time alone required effort I can’t expend a second time. Neither Bessus nor Nabarzanes can be trusted, please allow me to select thirty or so men to guard you.”  


“And these men would be Greeks?”  


“Yes, Megas Basileus.” From the shadows of the ledge outside the room she could not see the speaker, but she could hear his voice shake. “Argives, Thebans, even a few from Sparta, I’ve fought alongside them for years.”  


“Patron.” The Persian’s voice was both tired and kindly, which surprised her. She’d wanted him to be cold, cruel, arrogant. “I did not seek to replace the fourth Artaxerxes, but when I did, when I chose this life I accepted that I would likely die in it.” She heard him stand. “If I accept this proposal, I will be telling the court that Bessus cannot be trusted. That my cousin is a threat to me.”  


“Frankly, Basileus, he is. A very grave threat to you.” She smiled at the tone of the man’s voice, at the exasperation in it. Her arms held her steady on the ledge, she knew she could wait and listen.  


“There is… let me call it an Order to things in Persia. As long as a King rules in accordance to that Order, he is invincible. He cannot be harmed. But when a King falls out of favor with that Order, disharmony follows. I have failed. Twice, I had Eskandar on the field of battle, with a superior force, and I could not best him. Twice I have fled from him.” The King of Kings’ had a deep voice, but she could hear the quaver in it. “I cannot flee a third time and remain King, no matter who I appoint to guard me.”  


“All I know is once Bessus realizes what I have tried to do, I’ll have to leave, Basileus Basileōn.” The sound of a cloak being thrown over a shoulder. “I will remain in Ecbatana for one more day. Then, if you have not changed your mind, I will leave before the Hellenes arrive on your doorstep. They’ve already burned down one of your homes.” She waited until she heard the sound of his footfalls passing out of the range of her hearing, and then waited until she was sure he was not coming back, before she pulled herself up over the ledge and into the room.  


It was opulent, as was to be expected. Disgraced and in flight for his life he might be, but Artashata – who ruled as Darius III, taking the name of the King who first dreamed of conquering all of Hellas – was still King of Kings. Instead of a throne, he reclined in a camp chair, but there were rich furs with a spotted pattern she’d seen a few times before – Leopards, she believed they were called, although there were none in Greece. Of gold and silver there was more than one person could spend in a lifetime in the form of cups and plates, in a neckpiece of gold that depicted a man seemingly rising out of a circle with two vast wings, a symbol she’d seen many times since entering the land of the Achaemenids. Indeed, the same symbol was painted in what appeared to be gold on the wall behind him.  


Darius sat with his head resting on his right hand, playing with a bracelet, his eyes unfocused. His face was lean and gaunt, and his beard was close cropped although his mustache was long, and occasionally his hand would come up to stroke at it. He was, she decided, a fairly average looking man for a Persian. She watched him, waiting to feel much of anything.  


Her hand twitched, imagining a spear shaft filling it, but she’d left that spear in Herodotus’ grave – not the one in Pella, nor the one in Thuria, but the real one. Nor did she need it any longer.  


He finally stood, stretching and yawning, and moved towards his bed. From the corner of the room she waited until he reached it to step forward, the words difficult on her tongue.  


“Hail, King of Kings.”  


Despite the clear surprise on his face, he turned and faced her without the outward signs of fear. It was clear that he hadn’t been expecting anyone, much less a Greek woman, to simply appear out of the shadows.  


“Before you call out, know that I will not harm you.”  


“Why would you be here, save to bring my head to Eskandar of Macedon?”  


“Alexander is more than capable of killing for himself, and while he isn’t above sending a throat slitter, I do not work for others.” Her eyes flashed the tawny color of a hunting lion and Darius felt again a shock of the same fear that had sent him and his chariot hurtling away from the lines at Issus, the fear that he cursed. In his younger days, before the greatest of burdens had been placed on him, he’d been a champion, a warrior. The Cadusii had known and feared him, in those long ago days.  


Now, this simple woman in a dark hood and a linothorax with leather and bronze accents stood before him and he was the one who felt fear. He fought his hands, placed them behind his back.  


“I came here to give you a message. One intended for Bessus, and those behind him. Those that were once behind you, before Issus and Gaugamela.” His throat went dry. He’d suspected, of course, but her casual way of telling him that they’d chosen his replacement, that he was already dead – it made him glad he’d hidden his hands from her.  


“Who are you?”  


“I have had many names. Aetos foreas. The Tainted One. You can call me Kassandra of House Agiad. Your former masters will know me even if you do not.” She moved in a circle, keeping him at the center as she did, scanning the room without letting him free from her gaze. “I come here to pay a debt.”  


He stood there, waited. But she knew patience… it had taken almost a century to reach this moment, to find this man in this room at this time. So she simply waited as well, watching him and the room around them both.  


“What debt?”  


“My son. His name was Elpidios. He was a beautiful boy. Stomach like a Spartan, always hungry.” She smiled, a small sad smile that only reached her eyes as pain, and for a moment he forgot that she was there uninvited in his room, forgot that for all he knew she was there to kill him. “His father was Persian. Your masters killed him. Sent waves of killers after me. As you can see, I’m still alive.”  


“So it’s revenge you’re here for.” He shook his head. “I’m alone, surrounded by those that despise me. The ones most loyal to me are mercenaries from your own land. I have nothing to lose.”  


“I know.” The smile went cold as a blade. “Who do you think did this to you?” It hung in the room between them, and she stepped closer, a light in her eyes now that turned them nearly black, that cast shadows over her irises. “That mad Makedonian boy? He was going to be disinherited. Phillip would have taken years more to come here. I’d waited long enough. It took me so, so long to get him on that throne, to unite that nation of goat farms and barbarians into a passable Greek state, to make Amphipolis the seat of a great empire… and he cautions me? Tells me to wait? Me?” She laughed like hate strangling her.  


“You did… how? Why?” He shook his head. “What did I ever do to you, to Greece? I’ve never…”  


“You were nothing. You are nothing. Just a rock in the road.” She drew an object from behind her, and a flare of impossibly bright golden light filled the room. In her hand now was a staff, entwined with snakes, a pair of wings at its tip around what looked to be a spear point. She held it out, pointed it at him. “It was simply your poor fortune to be seated on a throne I chose to destroy. Because it would hurt those who put you there.”

To Be Continued...


	2. Liars and lies we tell ourselves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Order of Ancients took the life she imagined from her.  
Now, she takes Persia away from them.

Bessus was used to deference.  


“I want to know what you spoke to him about.”  


“I know.” The intractable irritant standing in front of the Satrap of Bactria did not fear him, and for Bessus, that was the worst part of him – and it wasn’t as if the Satrap found much that he liked about Patron, head of Darius’ mercenary forces. Like most of his kind, he was dressed in a chiton underneath a bronze breastplate to differentiate himself from the linothorax worn by the Macedonian forces. Bessus didn’t know where Patron was from – somewhere to the south of Hellas, one of their more bellicose towns. It simply hadn’t ever mattered before. The man was moderately tall, with close cropped sandy hair and face that said I have seen everything man can do to man.  


“Then why do I not already know?”  


“Because I don’t report to you, Satrap.” Even standing there alone, armed with little more than a Xiphos and holding his strange crested helmet in his left hand, Patron’s blandness was born of supreme confidence. Bessus knew he could have the man killed – the five guards with him would gladly dispatch the Greek at a crook of his finger. But if Patron realized that, he gave no sign. “The Basileus Basileon sought my opinion, and I have given it. If he wishes you to know what we discussed, I’m sure he will tell you.”  


Even this late in the year, Ecbatana sweltered at night. Bessus preferred his homeland, Bactria, to the east – beyond even the boundaries of Old Persia, north of the Kush. He would have given much to have already dispatched Artashata and taken the army there, but such was not what he had been ordered to do, and those that Bessus served had ways to ruin a man that Bessus did not wish to experience.  


He stared into the mercenary’s eyes, and saw nothing there he could use. No fear, no arrogance, no disrespect, just bland honesty. Standing on the street in front of six loyal men who would kill him with a word, Patron would not tell Bessus what he wanted to know. And killing him would cost the army two hundred trained Hoplites, men who knew the Macedonians and knew how to fight them. Such men were rare, especially now.  


Bessus gestured and his men came up to surround him.  


“I’ll speak to the King about this.”  


“Please do.” Patron nodded to him, drawing a red cloak up over his shoulders. “I’ll be with my men should you or the Basileus need me.” Bessus didn’t know if the Greek used his native tongue when he said King just to irritate Persians or not. He watched the man stride away, turned to a thin-faced soldier to his left.  


“Follow him.”  


“Yes, my lord.” Bessus had already turned his attention to the former summer palace, now serving Darius as his only palace. The concentric walls surrounding the city were formidable, built in the old Median style, but neither Bessus nor his cousin were fools enough to expect them to keep out the Macedonians. The madmen from the West had carved their way through Egypt and Ionia and now, they were seated on thrones in Persia itself. Parse was theirs, and if the rumors were true, they’d burned it – the great city of the old Persians burned to revenge the sack of a pissant little town by Xerxes almost two hundred years gone.  


None of them had seen it coming.  


They’d all known the Empire was in a sorry state, of course. The very fact that it had lost and regained Egypt, that the Satraps were eyeing each other with knives hidden in their fists, the means by which Artashata had become Darius – none of this was lost on them. Persians had always quarreled, even when ruled by their greatest kings – even under Cyrus and Darius I, Persians had quarreled. But if you had asked Bessus the greatest danger to the Achaemenid throne, he would never have guessed that Macedonians – once subjects of it – would lead a Greek army east.  


The idea still seemed absurd even now that all of the kingdoms west of Persia were under the thumb of a man barely past twenty years, a horse rider who led from the saddle and who had no concept of rulership past the cattle pen he called a nation. He polluted ancient thrones with his calloused ass and held orgiastic feasts in halls that once knew Cyrus.  


We conquered so many kingdoms. So many empires fell to us. We brought Order to the world, and now we burn as a torch to light a demon’s parties. Bessus knew little of the west – a land of savages, or arrogant sellswords like Patron. He wished to know even less. As he and his escort made their way up into the royal presence, guards offering him his proper deference at each point, his bad temper cooled somewhat. There was still time to salvage the situation. From Bactria, he could rally enough men and arms to fight the Macedonians, stretch them out past their supply lines, cut them off and swallow them up by sheer numbers. It nearly worked at Issus, before Darius lost his nerve.  


It’s time to deal with my cousin.  


Finally, the last four guards, members of the Immortals and personally loyal not to Darius or Bessus but Persia as a whole, allowed him past with his retinue. The five of them strode boldly into the royal presence, for Bessus was not merely Satrap of Bactria. No, a far greater power held Bessus up.  


There was an Order to Persia, and Bessus served that Order.  


It wasn’t until they reached Darius’ chamber that Bessus began to feel uneasy. Darius was seated on his ‘throne’, a converted camp chair he used instead of the circular seat that dominated the room. His eyes were sunken in, staring at a bracelet on his arm as if he’d never seen it before.  


“My King.” Bessus spoke, waiting for Darius to look over to him. “I was speaking to Nabarzanes about this mercenary of yours, and…”  


The sound was so faint he barely heard it. The sound of a blade burying itself in flesh, the patter of droplets falling against stone. The half-gurgle of a breath interrupted. Bessus turned, and saw an impossible thing.  


His four attendents, hardened killers all, dead. Two of them lay with their necks clearly broken, the mark of a blade across their throats and blood pooling on their armor. A third’s head was split, his eye a ruin, while the one that had been closest to Bessus stared up at him from dead eyes. Standing there over the corpses was a woman in a dark hooded cloak and linothorax armor.  
He opened his mouth to speak, to call out to Darius’ guards and her hand clamped around his throat, fingers easily strong enough to crush his neck with one twist. She took him up off of the floor with no more effort than he would have expended to reprimand a small child and slammed him back first into a pillar next to Darius.  


“Your cousin’s here.” She turned to Darius. “Would you like to see him die?”  


“They’ll just choose someone else.” Bessus couldn’t breathe, flashes and spots crawling across his vision. The woman, her jaw square and strong, dropped him just enough to bring her face to his and he realized she was taller than he was. Her arm was like corded iron, his hands unable to so much as bend it.  


“If you make a sound, I’ll rip your stomach open.” She dropped him, and the curved blade in her hands nearly clipped his face. On his hands and knees, he sucked in a breath, his greying vision full of the bodies of the four men he’d walked into the room with. “Do we understand each other?”  


Still unable to speak, Bessus met her eyes and flinched at what he saw there. Not that she would kill him – Bessus was not afraid to die, exactly. He didn’t want to, but he’d fought in war, and it hadn’t been Bessus who broke at Issus or Gaugamela. It was the contempt with which she regarded him. She’d kill him with no more effort or thought than he would a scorpion he found underfoot.  
“Please.” It was Darius who spoke. “You have him here. You can deliver your message.”  


“As you say, King of Kings.” Bessus himself was no stranger to saying that title with less than perfect deference, but even he blanched at the way it sounded coming from her. She dropped into a crouch, made sure Bessus was looking at her face. “My name is Kassandra. Do you know me, Bactrian?”  


“Should I?”  


“Considering what your masters cost me? How they flung men and blades at me for decades? I would hope so, child of Baxtris.” She chuffed, a noise not unlike a tiger he’d seen in the gardens of the royal palace in Persepolis, a gift from the Sattagydia. “But it doesn’t matter.”  


The blade in her hand glittered and vanished into the folds of her cloak, and she stood up.  


“Darius already knows you plan on dragging him east in chains. You and Nabarzanes. I’ve offered him both of your heads, but it seems he doesn’t want them.”  


Bessus looked over to his cousin, who still sat there staring at his own wrists. The King of Kings, Great King of Persia, a man Bessus had once served with as much loyalty as was to be found in any Satrap these days, simply shook his head without looking up.  


“Why would you…”  


“We are no more.” Darius finally lifted his head. “They burned Parse. Cyrus the Great’s city, gone. Greek is being spoken everywhere west of Persia. I offered Eskandar everything from the coast to Cappadocia, and his reply? I was trying to bribe him with what he already had. So what if you want to sit on the throne? You’ll have to take it from him.”  


“So tell your masters, Bactrian.” Kassandra spoke, her voice as much like iron as her fingers had been, and just as breath-stealing as her grip. “You came west, seeking Tainted Ones. Perhaps Darius and Xerxes, before I was born, danced to the same Order. I do not know. I do not care. I do not care that you burned Athens, I do not even care that you killed my Grandfather. I would never have come east. I would never have brought him east, had you simply called it a lost cause after Xerxes failed. Had you left me alone with…” Her voice cracked. “You tell them it’s Elpidios who is killing them.”  


She strode to the window, stopped to look back. Bessus had ordered men killed in front of their families, had fought in war, had seen hate in another’s eyes. But what she felt went far beyond anything like hate. In her eyes he could see the death not of a man, not even of a nation, but of the Order itself.  


Before his baffled eyes she leapt up onto the threshold, turned her back to both of them. “And none of it would have happened if they’d left us alone. You tell them that, too. Tell them that they were right. I will burn their world.”  


Bessus struggled to his feet as she leapt out of view. Staggered over, looked out over Ecbatana below them, the ringed walls of the fortress and city. She was nowhere to be seen.


End file.
